Having engineered the Irish "No" vote against the Lisbon treaty, the businessman Declan Ganley seeks a wider platform for his anti Brussels initiative. Launching Libertas as a party in the UK yesterday, he said it will run candidates in the European Parliament elections on June 4, as well as contesting the ballot in countries across the EU. He's a big man. These are big plans. But it may not be that straightforward, for a glance at the Electoral Commission's website will tell him that the name Libertas UK was registered here last December. The woman responsible is Bridget Rowe, the former editor of the Sunday Mirror. One of her mates is Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip. Mr Farage and Mr Ganley do not get on. You get the drift. If Ganley searches further, he will find that the name has also been registered in the Czech Republic, this time by Vladimir Zelezny. He is part of the Independence and Democracy group at the European Parliament, as is Ukip. Zelezny and Farage are not unfamiliar. Shortly after the launch, Ganley's party was registered as New Dawn for Europe: Libertas.eu, but it could all be a bit confusing come the June elections. Maybe they should change it. Kilroy Silk tried Veritas to no avail. Civitas is gone, snaffled by a thinktank. Backwards would be Satrebil. Just helping.

Lord Tebbit by Nicola Jennings Photograph: Nicola Jennings/Other

Problems aplenty for Heston Blumenthal. Four hundred diners are said to have fallen ill after eating at his restaurant, The Fat Duck. Zipper problems, financial worries, hit Gordon Ramsay. Worrall Thompson has restaurants in administration. Who'd be a celebrity chef? But then they are good but they are not Lord Tebbit (pictured), who tells us that his latest work, to be published this summer, is a cookery book listing recipes for game. Delicacies, hard-boiled. Can't wait.

After a period of lackadaisical inquiry, we hear at last from the Royal British Legion as to how one of our loyal band of readers acquired a poppy from them by text, only to receive a call back four months later from a lady who thanked him for his selflessness and then tried to flog him cheap energy. "The Legion has not sold or given away any data," a statement tells us. "A telephone fundraiser or fundraisers, having received positive interest in the Poppy Appeal from members of the public then raised questions about unrelated services. The Legion received a handful of complaints about this practice. As soon as the complaints were received, the matter was looked into and the practice was put to a stop." We think this means something. There may even be an explanation in there. We are trying to find out. Stay close.

So Wormwood Scrubs is now listed but there is disappointing news about the Colony Room Club in Soho's Dean Street, which is officially not part of our heritage. An application to "list" the club, one time home-from-home to Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, George Melly, Jeffrey Bernard and many other creative types, has been turned down by culture minister Barbara Follett on the advice of an English Heritage inspector. Despite noting that Muriel Belcher, the original owner, "deliberately nurtured an ambience suited to artists, Bohemians, gays and all those on the fringes of 1950s society", the inspector sadly concludes that, once the pictures and bric-a-brac are taken away, all that was left was "a sparse room with a functional bar counter". As opposed to a magical underground grotto. They make up the rules as they go along.

Finally, though we have long learned to cherish the notion of the academic as media tart - yes, you David Starkey - the vast majority prefer to keep their own counsel. They worry about being overexposed, trivialised. Some, according to Sally Feldman, of the University of Westminster and a former editor of Woman's Hour, can't deal with the adulation. "I once did my usual show of gushing, telling an especially shy professor how marvellous she had been," she told Times Higher Education, recalling days at the BBC. "She was so overcome with the unexpected appreciation that when asked about payment, she pulled out her chequebook and said: "How much do you charge?" You see, there is Starkey and then there are others and we must protect them. Academia is another world.